smart ways to use poetry in a street fight
by dreamsteampunk
Summary: Dialecte des cyclones. Patois des pluies. Langages des tempêtes. Je dis le déroulement de la vie en spirale. / Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Languages of storms. I speak the unravelling of the spiralling life. (written for 2016 LesMisSummerHols, prompt was "book title: smart ways to use poetry in a street fight, fantasy/reincarnation)


_I may have made a couple mistakes in my poetry translations, bc i wanted to keep everything in the English alphabet. I speak Bengali fluently (it's my first language!) but the Mandarin may be a little fucked up, since i can't translate the tones over._

 _I cite the poems at the end in order of appearance in the fic_

* * *

There's a certain kind of magic in poetry, the way ordinary words could be strung together to create something so much more extraordinary. It was art and expression in it's purest form, verbal and rhythmic.

"You're being pretentious," Bahorel warned fondly, sitting on the steps in front of the library. The light was hitting him at just the right angle, coloring him with the dusky pink of the setting sun. Jean got a bit distracted, watching the interplay of light amongst strands of his dark hair.

"It's not pretentious! It's true."

"Mm." Bahorel went back to his book. Jean got a bit irrationally jealous of the novel, for getting the lion's share of the other man's attention.

He was jealous of a book. How pathetic could he get?

"Look, I'm just saying, there has to be something about poetry. Just, look!"

Jean pulled a couple paperclips and a loose scrap of paper out of his pocket. His ink-stained fingers left little black smudges all over the wrinkled yellow legal paper.

He crumpled it all together in his fist and muttered a few times under his breath, " Phulei phulei, dholei dholei, bahei kyba kunjei bai ."

A Tagore poem, from his motherland of Bangladesh. One, fittingly enough, about flowers. Phulei.

He slowly opened his fist, revealing to Bahorel's casually interested eyes a perfectly folded origami flower. His prints had been rearranged, forming a detailing on the edges of the petals. The paperclips had melted themselves down into a gnarled metal stem, perfect for clipping into Bahorel's long, disheveled hair. Jean reached over and did just that.

"A flower crown," Bahorel said disbelievingly. Jean noted satisfactorily that he still made no move to remove it.

"Technically, flower clip," He corrected, smiling innocently. Bahorel rolled his eyes again.

"Could you be more cliche?"

Jean just laughed.

* * *

Bahorel preferred French poetry when casting, liking the feel of the harsh guttural consonants, and the implications of the ghosts of letters along with smoother, cleaner words. It was an eclectic language, one he liked best of all.

French poetry was particularly useful for foundation work. Transfiguration, ferrokinesis, rough inelegant manipulation, they all fell under his specialty.

His parents had been a bit disappointed with his choice. He could never get the hang of their Mandarin, though, so specific in intent and careful in tone. It was a finicky language, a simple slip up resulting in a botched spell. However, Chinese spells were powerful, and difficult to undo.

He'd never liked the finality of that. Mostly, the style he liked best was Jean's. Bengali was a language with softened edges, 'h's between the blows of consonants, with a melodic quality between the twists of tongue.

It made for a subtle sort of magic, all about perception and imagery. Everytime he did a little sigil work, there was a buzz around him, pleasant and light. A counterpoint to the staccato of Mandarin, and the growl of French.

They completed each other, in a way. Bahorel did the groundwork, and Jean, the details.

* * *

He figures he's in trouble the second he sees Jean running down the street, looking like he dressed himself in a dark room. His jacket was, quite frankly, a crime against nature. It was neon orange , for god's sake.

"Bahorel! Bahorel! I figured it out!" He yelled, tearing down the street with abandon.

"Figured what out?"

Jean pulled out his phone, tapping at his screen. Bahorel felt vaguely uncomfortable and unreasonably embarrassed, comparing his cracked up Blackberry to Jean's iPhone. He got over it quick when Jean hit play.

" Ksudhaara raaj'ye prithby gadyamaya puhrnimaara camda yena jhalasaanoh ruthi ," intoned Jean, tinny and crackly over the smartphone's speakers.

Bahorel immediately straightened up. "I'm not hungry anymore!"

Jean grinned back, the delight at solving a problem clear on his face. "Yeah, I got my spells to work through a phone!"

He didn't know just how damn impressive he was. Very few people ever managed to record spells through technology and ever get them to work. Through cell phones, poetry became simple words, and over text, all the tone was stolen from it's lines. It took a lot of effort and emotion for even a simple, two lined spell, and the effects faded even quicker. But if anyone could do it, it would certainly be his best friend.

"You just cured world hunger," Bahorel said, awed. Jean deflated a little.

"Actually," he sighed, "I didn't. You still need to eat, but as long as the moon is out, you won't feel hunger pangs or anything. It's really not that impressive."

"Hey! Yes it is! And so what if it's not perfect? You've still gotten your spell up through technology! That's damn impressive, screw anyone who says it ain't so."

Jean smiled again, shy this time. Bahorel grinned back and pulled him in, hugging him as tight as he could. So what if his stomach was still growling? Jean's spell still worked for a bit.

* * *

They didn't live in a good area. There was an anger about the place that sunk into your bones, one you'd never be free of. The malcontent of hundreds of people forced to endure things they never should have. It could turn men cruel, and it was said, kids were crueller.

Bahorel knew that it was no place for someone innocent, like Jean. Jean was soft-spoken, careful, shy but so very, very brave. He was nothing like the borough, and didn't deserve to be there.

In fact, he didn't even need to be there. What he was doing in Brooklyn was anybody's guess. Jean lived in Staten Island, a respectable place to be with rich folk as parents. And yet, he crossed the bridge each day to visit the kids in Brooklyn. To visit him.

Eponine scoffed. "Love-struck fool," she said over a batch of laundry. The rainwater had collected just enough in baskets for them to get the stains out of a few shirts, without upping their water bill.

"May I remind you," he raised his eyebrows, "of one Marius Pon-"

"You bastard!" Eponine shrieked, possibly playfully, and threw her wet shirt at him. She followed up with a brutal stream of Mandarin. All Bahorel managed to decipher was something about graves and pigs. He regretted for a second his choice of French for his magic. Eponine had a habit of never letting you know when she cursed you, and he would like a forewarning if his fingers would fall off into his food.

"Fine. You don't bring up my crush, I don't bring up yours," He bargained, subtly checking to make sure he was still in one piece.

She scoffed again and pointed at the shirt. It was now lying on the ground, slightly plastered to Bahorel's shoe. "Pick that up, we need to wash it again."

"It's your shirt!"

" _Pick it up, Bahorel._ "

* * *

It was probably a little embarrassing how quickly Bahorel could type in Jean's number. Muscle memory only accounted for so much of it.

Jean's spell, the one he got to work even through the dampening screen of technology, was still queued up under voicemail. At this point, the spell barely worked for a few seconds, having been technically 'cast' so long ago. But his slow, rhythmic spell-casting was nice and soft, and fraught with the gentle hint of accent underneath. It helped as a substitute for when Jean couldn't make it over the bridge.

Like today.

His thumb hovered indecisively over the "call" button. It was lit up in a mocking green, bright and cheery. The time flashed back at him from the upper right corner of his screen.

Bahorel steeled himself, took a deep breath, and prayed to whatever god there was that Jean bothered to stay up until midnight.

The dial tone dragged on for a solid half minute, until there was a blessed click , and Jean's sleepy voice.

"B? Bahorel? What is it?" He asked, voice heavy with barely shrugged off sleep. Bahorel froze. He hadn't thought this far.

"Jean," he said, "I can't sleep."

Jean didn't respond for a bit, which Bahorel's brain filled in with shrieks of " That was so stupid! " and " You are so lame! "

His brain was interrupted in its tirade when Jean's blessed voice, a little more alert this time, rang through the tinny speaker. "You want to," he trailed off to yawn, which made Bahorel feel a little guilty, "you want to try a spell through the phone? I know a couple sleep spells."

"I'll try anything at this point," he groaned, tossing again in his sheets.

"Mm, I feel. Ghumaye parithe hobe ekadina akasera naksatrera tale. sranta haye uttara meirura shadha tusarera sindhura matana. "

He felt something warm as Jean spoke, like a blanket on a rainy afternoon. He suspected it had more to do with his friend's smooth, melodic Bengali than his magic.

* * *

" Les noeuds ont éclaté. Les roses envolées. Dans le vent, à la mer s'en sont toutes allées ."

"That was nice," the officer said, rough and clipped. "Now what the hell did you just do?"

He was rather rudely and abruptly cut off when the ground at his feet rumbled. Quite literally. Then, the wind picked up. Detective Javert found himself buffeted back a few feet by a bitingly cold sea breeze.

This man wasn't going to go anywhere near Mr. Valjean. The neighborhood kids may not know much about the nice man who lived in the church with Cosette, but they all liked Cosette. And none of them were ever too fond of the cops.

Bahorel noticed the tell-tale slap of expensive shoes on concrete. He winced, divided between keeping an eye on the rapidly recovering cop, and looking out for his friend.

With a muttered curse and a clear idea of what he wanted, he barked out his overly long incantation.

" Chaque jour, j'emploie le dialecte des cyclones fous. Je dis la folie des vents contraires ," he chanted, wincing as the winds began to form. So much for discrete. The hurricane building up was drowning out any noise Bahorel could possibly hear, and as a result, any warning of Jean.

He started up again, hurried to finish it.

" Chaque soir, j'utilise le patois-"

" Patois des pluies furieuses! " shouted back the cop. Up till now, Bahorel had assumed that the rough and unpleasant man didn't know magic, let alone French magic.

He was so fucked.

* * *

Jean had known something was up the second he'd crossed into the neighborhood and it was quiet. There was always noise here. Always a thousand different dialects clashing together at once, poetry snapped out on street corners, laughter and swears at every stoop.

Something was up, and that was the exact moment Jean had started running.

" Alo amar, alo ogho, alo bhubon borho, " he said quietly, igniting all the streetlamps as he passed. Why were they turned out? Why would they be off?

He finished his poem. " Nache alo, nache o bhai, amar praner kache!"

With that, and a quick visualisation, all the lights flickered back on.

"Bahorel! B, where are you? Bahorel? Grantaire? Epo-"

Someone cut in, harshly snapping out their words. " Bu gan gao sheng yu! Kong jing tiang shang ren!"

Jean's mouth clicked shut, not of his own accord. He spun around, coming face to face with Eponine's terrified and angry expression.

Then he heard a crack of thunder (?!), and a muffled shout. A muffled shout that sounded way too much like Bahorel's for his comfort.

He gestured aggressively at his still glued shut mouth, and Eponine sighed. A couple waves of her hand later, his jaw unclenched and he could speak again.

"What the fuck?" He chose to say first with his newfound privileges. Eponine glared, motioning to get down and listen. Jean got down with her, confused.

"Listen, there's a cop. He's looking for old man Valjean. Bahorel told him and Cosette to run, and he's-"

"He's fighting a _cop_?"

"It's Bahorel, he's stupid, of course he is," she muttered, then harshly looked up. "Aaaand, so are you."

Jean nodded dumbly.

"Oh my god, I already have old man Valjean and B's bail money to consider and now I need to get rich boy's too?"

He noticed, as he ran to the convent, that Eponine still didn't try to stop him. That counted as approval, he supposed.

* * *

They both used French magic. That made sense.

They were also both fighting over control of a far too large hurricane, contained in that single street. Which made a bit less sense.

They were each shouting lines from the same poem, each desperate to twist it to their vision, each desperate to take control of the storm before the other.

Wait. Twist it to your own vision.

Bengali wasn't a particularly powerful language, because the poetry tended to be too specific, too descriptive. But if he dealt in metaphor…

" Phulei phulei, dholei dholei, bahei kyba kunjei bai! Alo amar, alo ogo, alon bhubon borho! Bahei kyba kunjei bai! "

* * *

"I've been meaning to ask," he started, staring down at the boy on the stoop. "What exactly was that poem?"

"Which one?" Jean asked innocently, flattening another bandaid on Bahorel's scraped skin.

"The, uh, phulei phulei one. That you stopped the hurricane with."

Jean stopped and blinked a couple times. "Uh, it's a Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore."

Bahorel smiled and drew a clip out of his pocket. "Really? What's it about?"

"Oh my god! You kept that?"

"Well, you did make it for me."

Jean snorted. "You are so sentimental, tough guy."

"Guilty as charged. But really. What kind of poem stops a hurricane and makes jewelry?"

"It's, ah, it's English translation is kind of… something like 'flowers sway to and fro; touch each other; light breeze'. It's ah, it's embarrassing."

"I'm sorry, but who's the one who had to get saved in a street fight by a guy who weighs 90 pounds soaking wet? You think your poem is embarrassing?"

"Well, uh, you know how spells focus on, you know, intentions and interpretations? Like, all poems and stories rely on the reader's interpretation. And that's how spells work, you interpret the poem to mean something, and by saying so, it is so. So, when I made your clip, I interpreted it as, uh, literally actual flowers swaying to and fro. So, you got an actual flower. Or well, close enough."

Bahorel raised his eyebrows, motioning with his unoccupied hand to 'hurry the fuck along'.

"So, uh, with the hurricane, I needed to interpret it differently. Obviously. So, uh -god this is embarrassing- uh, the 'flowers' can be assumed to be a metaphor for, well, love. And our, uh, our completely platonic love for each other, completely platonic, well, that could be what overcomes the storm and uh, turns it into a gentle breeze."

He opened his mouth, but before a sound could come out, Jean beat him to the punch.

"It was all I could think of at the time! I'm, oh my god, this is really embarrassing and I swear it was platonic, I meant love platonically!"

"Well," Bahorel smiled and leaned in for the kiss, "that's open to interpretation."

.

.

.

END

* * *

 _Works Cited: Gitanjali - Rabindranath Tagore, Hey Mahajibon - Sukanta Bhattacharya, Staying the Night at a Mountain Temple - Li Bai, Post-mortem Untitled Poem - Jibanananda Das, Dialecte des Cyclones - Franketienne_


End file.
